Melbourne is a city frequently celebrated as Australia’s coffee capital, famous for a lively café scene and world-class roasts. Over the last few years, the local coffee scene has experienced an amazing transition. Cafés have recently taken big leaps by trying out Asian-inspired ingredients. As this transition continues to take root, it’s altering how local coffee drinkers experience coffee, breaking norms and creating thrilling new taste experiences.
“Before, about 80 percent of what we sold was traditional coffee,” he noted. This statistic underscores the significant shift in consumer preferences as more cafés, including Sim’s, embrace innovative concoctions that blend traditional coffee with unique Asian flavors.
Jay Lee, owner of Bloom Specialty Coffee in Melbourne, Australia, agrees, underlining the need to differentiate your drink menu to adapt to evolving consumer tastes. “Offering a range of drinks is the key to success,” he said. His new café has further built that reputation by formulating signature drinks. These lip-smacking coolers please the palate and impress the patron with their fabulous features.
One exceptional product on the menu is the Kinako latte. This flavorful, caffeine-free beverage, prepared from roasted soybean flour, has found its way into both Japanese and Korean culture. Lee’s café enhances this drink with a signature salted vanilla cream topping and finishes it off with brown sugar, creating a delightful balance of flavors.
Getting these new looks right takes a tremendous amount of care, Lee adds. “Asian-style drinks usually involve more steps — syrups, powders, creams, and clear layering,” he explained. “Making new styles takes more time and precision than traditional Australian coffees.”
Traditional coffee tastes continue to dominate with the more mature consumer base. They still love the classics—the flat white, cappuccino and long black even in the age of creative, on-the-fly drinks. Sam Wang, another café owner, confirms this trend: “Flat whites, cappuccinos and long blacks are still our best-sellers.” He explains that the majority of his middle-aged clientele are always health conscious. They don’t want sugary drinks, which we think keeps them coming back to the classics.
Even with this stronghold of traditional coffee, Asian-inspired drinks are starting to make waves. They’re making up close to half of Lee’s café’s overall sales. These specialty drinks typically sell for a minimum of $8. Compared to that, typical coffees retail from $5 to $7.
A big reason for the increasing popularity of these Asian-style offerings can be attributed to their craveable complexity. Consumers want better than a quick pick-me-up. Texture, taste and shareable formats are driving high-growth innovation. As one customer remarked, “Like tea, but more a mix of coffee and tea, and flavors I haven’t tried before.”
Cafés are getting creative too, playing with Asian flavours to make them palatable to Australian palates. In Australia, people prefer a more balanced acidity and less sweetness, which can be common in sparkling wines. This thoughtful approach is key to keeping customers’ attention and exposing them to new flavor experiences.
One of the most important drivers in this change is the impact of social media. Despite that recent trend with Instagrammable lattes going crazy viral in popularity, one café owner noted that “Trends like Instagram-worthy lattes are exploding in popularity right now.” The brilliant colors of these drinks help with their share-ability online, making them that much more enticing to a younger audience.
Additionally, the impact of Asian culture reaches much further than just food and drinks. Asian influence is the touchstone,” an owner of one café said. This trend is not limited to the home sector, it can be observed across fashion, beauty, travel, and technology industries as well.
With each passing day, as Melbourne’s coffee culture blossoms into something new and progressive, cafés are leading this flavor revolution. Together, they are creating a new coffee culture in the city. Their creative techniques and passion for working with lesser known ingredients are what make this shift occur.
